bengali style cholar dal

[mongo_jones]

okay, so when i say quick and easy i should also mention the words "pressure" and "cooker". this is my mother's recipe for cholar dal (what the rest of india calls channa dal). i've tinkered with it for years but never surpassed the original. after eating my mother's version in delhi this past december my wife has undiplomatically requested that i no longer attempt to be original. the base recipe first, followed by some suggested variations:

ingredients:

2 cups channa dal

1/2 cup moong dal

2 medium vine-ripened tomatoes chopped finely

2 tablespoons onion-ginger-garlic paste (i make a whole lot with 1 medium onion, 8 garlic cloves and a 2 inch piece of ginger and then use it in a whole lot of things)

salt

sugar

garam masala

turmeric- 2 tspns

red chilli powder 1/2 tspn

2 tablespoons torn coriander leaves for garnish

prep:

wash the dals together and pressure cook with 6 cups of water, salt and 1 tspn turmeric till just soft. (in my stone-age prestige pressure-cooker this translates into 4 whistles over medium heat and then letting it cool down on its own while i prep and make the tarka.)

in a karhai, heat oil and add everything except the garam masala and the coriander. reduce the heat to medium-low and cook until tomatoes completely decompose, everything cooks down and there is no water left. add the dal, bring to a boil and simmer over medium-low heat for 10-15 minutes. check the consistency--if too liquidy increase the heat and boil it down. the final consistency should be thick but pourable. taste for salt, add the garam masala, boil for another minute and then garnish with the coriander (cilantro) leaves.

eat with steamed rice or chapatis.

---

variations:

1. add vinegar to the tarka along with everything else for a sweet and sour flavor

2. fry some cumin seeds before adding the rest of the tarka ingredients

3. replace the tarka above entirely with a very spicy concentrated keema curry

[anil]

Dada,

Jaa khichu apni korchen, Cherra din, aur ekta choto khoti-restaurant ta khule din

[mongo_jones]

Dada,

Jaa khichu apni korchen, Cherra din, aur ekta choto khoti-restaurant ta khule din

well, keep in mind you haven't actually eaten any of my cooking. it is possible that i write a better dish than i make.

but you are kind to suggest it anyway. however, in my current line of work i get 4 months off in the summer and one in the winter.

[anil]

.......in my current line of work i get 4 months off in the summer and one in the winter.

Damn Faculty

[v. gautam]

Mongo,

just to add another perspective to your delicious chick pea dal: onions and garlic were a strict no-no in the food of my childhood, not even permitted in the kitchen, but the younger generation could indulge if cooked on a portable stove in the courtyard. Hence, no onion or garlic paste, on the single grindstone, on which all spices for consecrated food [puja bhog, esp. Kali Puja] were ground. Even lentils Lens culinaris, mushoor dal, were classified as non-vegetarian' for certain purposes!

The chickpea dal of those kitchens then, also very similar to that cooked in the various confectioners and served with luchis:

Here is a rare dish where the fragrance of fresh ground turmeric is actually emphasized and desired, not strident but still noticeable; also, the dal like all my childhood cuisine, is syrupy sweet with jaggery, cane molasses.

Chickpea dal, boiled to tenderness, but still firm to the bite, yet slightly disintegrated around the edges to provide thickening; turmeric, salt, jaggery

Sambhar or tarka:

ghee, cassia leaf, whole red dry chili, cumin seed, asafoetida

Consistency: rather thick, chickpeas prominently visible in liquid.

This was the one dal never eaten with rice but with luchi, kachori, or even chapati.

Edited February 14, 2004 by v. gautam (log)

[mongo_jones]

gautam,

how about posting more old-school ghoti brahman recipes?

mongo

[v. gautam]

Mongo,

Your suggestion actually encompasses a lifelong dream, to present the foodways of the Rarhi and Daksinatya brahmans, as a glimpse into the evolution of Bengali cuisine. Chitrita Devi, Banerji, has made a praiseworthy effort to depict the cultural and religious matrix within which Bengali foodways must be cognized, but still her social class and urban upbringinging represents a point further along the evolutionary scale than what I am familiar with. Note the use of onions in her Aloo-posto recipe. Anyway, i admire what she has tried to do, and hope someday to add a little stupid something along similar lines.

Your request for recipes makes me wary, knowing myself to be a demented, wordy fool. I would very much like to post a thing on Bengali chutneys, but fear to torment the friends on this forum. If you are game, and can handle all the offers of assasination at your end, with utmost humility one is tempted to try.

Regards.

[Pan]

So "ghoti" means something other than George Bernard Shaw's spelling of "fish"?

[v. gautam]

Pan,

The younger generation appear to be comfortable using such identifiers as ghoti, bangal or bong, perhaps as a younger generation of Americans of color non-chalantly [and with pride] use certain racially-sensitive epithets. my own generation which has lived through Partition etc. are not comfortable with such terms, and in our homes, the language would not be accepted as polite usage; affectionate usage, yes, but only among intimates, much like the word 'ni .....' denotes intimacy [and affection, ownership of one's heritage etc.] in certain specific contexts.

Edited February 14, 2004 by v. gautam (log)

[Pan]

Oh, I see. I simply had no idea it meant anything.

[mongo_jones]

Oh, I see. I simply had no idea it meant anything.

pan,

a ghoti is a west-bengali (usually from calcutta), a bangal an east-bengali. as far as i know these are appellations that only/largely apply to hindus (gautam will know a whole lot more). as gautam indicates there may be generational issues around the use of these terms--friends from bangladesh are occasionally shocked to hear calcutta bengalis use the term "ghoti" to describe themselves; there, i gather, it still has a pejorative connotation. however, in my family, for instance, (not the most polite people on the planet) which is mixed (very proper calcutta brahmins on my mother's side, and badly behaved kayastha east-bengalis from mymensingh on my father's side) these terms are not charged in the manner they are for gautam. after partition, with the influx of east-bengali hindus into calcutta, they've served as cultural differentiators--east-bengalis speak a different dialect (though this too is generationally marked), cook differently and support different football teams.

i am from a generation that has been fortunate (or forgetful) to have not had to worry about other implications, consequences of these terms. (this is the case also with another word gautam made reference to: the word "bong", which is a, usually mocking, term used by north-indians to describe bengalis.) as such, and again because i come from a legendarily o-bhodro (loose translation: impolite, indecorous) family, i feel comfortable using them. i apologize to gautam or anyone else here who may feel uncomfortable around them.

as for george bernard shaw, his ghoti meant fish. which is a very bengali word.

regards,

mongo

[mongo_jones]

Mongo,

Your suggestion actually encompasses a lifelong dream, to present the foodways of the Rarhi and Daksinatya brahmans, as a glimpse into the evolution of Bengali cuisine. Chitrita Devi, Banerji, has made a praiseworthy effort to depict the cultural and religious matrix within which Bengali foodways must be cognized, but still her social class and urban upbringinging represents a point further along the evolutionary scale than what I am familiar with. Note the use of onions in her Aloo-posto recipe. Anyway, i admire what she has tried to do, and hope someday to add a little stupid something along similar lines.

Your request for recipes makes me wary, knowing myself to be a demented, wordy fool. I would very much like to post a thing on Bengali chutneys, but fear to torment the friends on this forum. If you are game, and can handle all the offers of assasination at your end, with utmost humility one is tempted to try.

Regards.

gautam,

if i didn't know better i'd call you coy. everyone who reads this forum will be thrilled beyond belief if you will share more of your deep knowledge of bengali food and its history/geography with us. for those of us in the diaspora especially (both in india and outside) knowledge of the cultural vectors that produce us becomes a little more blurred each year--for all i know it is the same story in calcutta. anyway, to cut a long story short: please let fly with as much as you have the energy for.

i'm still waiting for more information on where to find the 500 pages you made reference to earlier.

mongo.